By Bill Croke on 5.2.02 @ 12:19AM
CBS's ''Survivor'' would be a little more interesting if it involved, say, cannibalism, nineteenth-century style.
After breakfast we elected a man named Walker, from Detroit,
for supper. He was very good. I wrote his wife so afterward. He was
worthy of all praise. I shall always remember Walker. He was a
little rare, but very good.
--Mark Twain, "Cannibalism in the Cars," 1868
Just off Route 80 near Truckee, California, is the popular
Donner Party Picnic Area. Locals and tourists alike do lunch at
picnic tables near historical markers that relate the tale of the
eponymous 1846 emigrant expedition that was trapped by the howling
blizzards that frequent the Sierra Nevada in winter. As the
well-known story goes, as the suffering pioneers expired in the
snow they were enthusiastically eaten by family and friends.
Cannibalism has always been a mainstay of the-chips-are-down
survivalist school in the West. Kit Carson advised a greenhorn to
stay clear of his friend the mountain man Old Bill Williams when
the latter was truly hungry. Alfred Packer, a 19th century guide
whose memory is honored by an annual holiday festival in Colorado,
reputedly ate a number of his clients while trapped in a mountain
storm. One wonders how Williams and Packer -- born survivors --
would have fared under today's Hollywood klieg lights.
"Survivor," the popular CBS reality series, features people from
all walks-of-life scrambling to position themselves to win a grand
prize by being the sole survivor not voted off a tropical
Polynesian island. A tropical island? Tropical islands have fruit,
nuts and roots growing wild, not to mention the bounty of the sea.
Robinson Crusoe never had it so good. Pass the breadfruit. Who do
these modern-day "survivors" think they're kidding?
Survival in the American West always came in many guises. The
predominant one was the economic crapshoot of making a living in
unforgiving places. Going back to the fur trade and emigrant eras
-- fascinating and amusing tales of cannibalism aside -- the
stories are extraordinary.
John Colter -- in 1808 the victim of savage Blackfeet sport --
ran naked and barefoot the ten miles between the Jefferson and
Madison Rivers in present Montana in an adrenaline-pumped effort to
shake his pursuers, which he did. Over the course of the following
week he covered more than a hundred miles in this condition as he
made his way toward friendly campfires on the Bighorn River.
A party led by Jedediah Smith exploring the uncharted deserts of
the Southwest in 1826 fought off maddening thirst by drinking blood
bled from their horses and mules.
Thomas Fitzpatrick, while traveling to the 1832 Rendezvous at
Pierre's Hole in present Idaho, lost his horses and outfit to a
party of murderous Gros Ventres. Fitzpatrick escaped into the
mountains on foot and hid in a cave for a number of days while the
Indians futilely sought him. He drank water from a seep in the
cave, and literally ate his felt hat to satisfy his gnawing
hunger.
In 1823, Hugh Glass, torn to shreds by a grizzly and left for
dead by companions (the young Jim Bridger among them), crawled some
200 miles across a large portion of present South Dakota to an
encampment of trapping associates. He subsisted on roots and
berries during this supine, sometimes biped, journey. A man of
vicious temper, he instead -- in the end -- forgave his negligent
friends. He survived the bear only to be killed by Arikaras a few
years later.
In a skirmish with some Blackfeet in 1832, Jim Bridger picked up
two arrows in the back. One was pulled out, but the other was too
deep and the arrowhead remained embedded in muscle tissue for three
years. At the 1835 Green River Rendezvous the missionary-physician
Marcus Whitman removed the three-inch-long iron point in an outdoor
surgery -- with whiskey as anesthetic -- attended by hundreds of
curious trappers and Indians. Whitman was amazed at the size of the
arrowhead, and at Bridger's formidable constitution that had
enabled him to carry it for so long with no obvious detriment to
his health and vitality. The legendary mountain man's answer was
simple: "Meat don't spoil in the mountains, doctor."
We all know that "Survivor" is a harmless and silly thing
designed to amuse a jaded and entertainment-glutted American
populace. Its pretensions toward seriousness are not only an insult
to us, but says a lot about who we are in America 2002, and about
our ideas concerning heroes and personal virtue.
They don't make survivors like they used to.
topics:
Trade, Hollywood, Constitution, Oil
